


Mortal Coil

by 7veilsphaedra



Category: Saiyuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Intoxication, Legends, M/M, Saiyuki Reload Blast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25614163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7veilsphaedra/pseuds/7veilsphaedra
Summary: In that region of Tibet, the local folk tales and legends say, a drug runner built himself a pleasure palace with a dangerous curse attached. Gojyo didn't get the memo.
Relationships: Cho Hakkai & Sha Gojyo, Cho Hakkai/Sha Gojyo
Kudos: 12





	Mortal Coil

**Author's Note:**

> Status: Ficlet, 1,953 words complete.  
> Prompt: "Year of the Snake New Years celebrations, maybe a drunk Gojyo with a less than pleased Hakkai."  
> Saiyuki Reload Blast   
> The usual tropes are heavy in this one.

Strobe lights, lasers, and a floor that literally bounced with each bass reverberation; frisky dance partners of every size, shape and gender; the air shimmering with clouds of perfume and coke, but Gojyo only needed the music. He had worked himself into a trance state, dancing for hours. It had been so long since he had cut loose. Such a long time past, such a long ways away … was that person still in him somewhere?

Just that morning, he had stared at his reflection in a stream and noticed the tiny lines that had started to craze across his skin. It made him feel reflective, remembering the smoothness of that skin way, way back in the day when he’d scraped some joker named Cho Gonou off the forest floor, stuffed his guts back through the slash in his stomach, and hoisted him like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. The guy had weighed nothing, but Gojyo already had the weight of his birth bearing down Atlas-style upon him. He could shrug it off, back then, in a haze of alcohol and whatever mind-altering substance was making the circuit,; scooping wads of cash off the piles on the poker tables; dancing under the stars with a babe on each arm until he was dizzy from their pheromones and they took it to bed, where the dancing grew slicker and more poisonous. But after Gonou had arrived and Banri had been displaced, and Gonou had been reborn into Hakkai, that weight had been lifted. It literally floated off his shoulders like something else decided to carry it. It was as gone as a paradigm shift, like it never existed.

But ever since they made it to the Kush, the back of Gojyo’s neck had started to burn something fierce. Gojyo was starting to feel a little edgy, a little anxious, like he was missing something, like he had made a wrong turn when he signed up for the joyride westward into hell, like he was possessed. 

When he finally looked up from the stream, he saw something he never expected to see: a Massarati circling the mountain road, and when his eyes climbed up a little higher, he saw a white building shimmering on the benchland, a palace. It was a curious kind of thing to see out there — a collision of different times, cultures and spaces as out of place as a disco in a monastery. 

So Gojyo had asked around about it, but nobody seemed to know anything. Some of the reactions to his questions were weird, too: villagers clamming up, shaking their heads, shaking him off and walking away as though they couldn’t walk away fast enough. That, alone, should’ve told him enough. 

Gojyo, being Gojyo, didn’t take the hint. Not even when Hakkai looked up from the underpants he was fastidiously washing in the sink of their room at the monastery, and asked what was eating him. 

Gojyo weirdly thought about the cravings for strange foods that pregnant women sometimes got.

“I have a hankering for fresh sushi,” he said in a sing-songy voice, not really there, not really saying what he meant, speaking in code, speaking in tongues. “You know how sometimes you just want to eat some raw fish?”

“Okaaaaay,” Hakkai replied, throttling the tighty-whiteys until every last drop had been squeezed out. "Are you quite sure you're feeling alright, Gojyo?

Hakkai, unlike Gojyo, was ageless. Hakkai, unlike Gojyo, had always been middle-aged, even back in the orphanage days. Hakkai, unlike Gojyo, wasn’t losing everything with the corruption of his body and the loss of his youth bearing down on it with the entire weight of the world. 

With that, Gojyo made up his mind. He splashed on some cologne, grabbed his leather jacket and walked out the door with a wave, “I’m off to catch me some tuna. Later!”

He had already been in a kind of dream-like state as he walked up the mountain. It never occurred to him that something was strange when he was waved past the lineup, and through the ropes and doors, and into the purple cavern with its smoke and lights and music and dancing. 

It felt like the most natural thing in the world for Gojyo to get in there and start dancing, losing himself to rhythms and flowing movements and the way his drops of sweat sizzled when they hit the dance floor like rain on hot pavement. At some point, he lost himself — lost the memory of why he was there and what led him there. Partners came and went, rubbing up against him like water snakes, like eels. As the evening progressed, he even lost his shirt, and could feel strange fingers sliding across his skin, and sometimes lips, and how he was lost in the senseless arousal of these light touches and caresses. Strange faces swam around him. None of it meant anything. If he could still feel, Gojyo felt he wasn’t nearly lost enough. 

The only face that was constant was of the full moon which gleamed through a bank of clerestory windows to the south. It was sailing westward and there was something about that which bothered Gojyo, something he had forgotten.

There was a cautionary voice, familiar and somewhat prissy, which nibbled on the edge of Gojyo’s thoughts, but he suppressed it. There was ample time for the karmic kickback later. 

And then the most beautiful person he had seen in his life walked onto the floor, and Gojyo lost himself in something else. Where had he seen that face before? It was pale and lit with rose-tints, green eyes, glossy black hair and a tall supple body. A surge of heat rushed over Gojyo’s body. He felt desire rush up from the earth, coursing through his legs and settling in his belly. He could feel it flutter in his muscles.

He wasted no further time, but walked over to this gorgeous man and asked, “Can I buy you a drink?”

The stranger looked startled. 

“Oh, I don’t think that will be—”

Gojyo’s attraction was so strong, it had to be palpable. There was no way the other man couldn’t feel it.

“Not necessary? How about you join me in a dance on the floor instead?”

Any protests the man may have uttered were lost as he was spun onto the floor. Gojyo went for a slow, sultry dance, running his hands over his body as he wanted to run them over his partner’s body.

“Oh, my! I don’t—mmph.” The comment was swallowed as Gojyo leaned forward, slid his hand under the man’s chin, tilted his head back and closed his lips over his mouth. It was a soft and wet and surprisingly yielding mouth. As their tongues tangled, Gojyo could feel the strength slipping down through the soles of his feet. His head grew light and woozy. His air had run out, but he still sighed heavily when the time came to pull away. 

Mutual desire, thick and hot like taffy bubbling on the stove, leeched any resistance from the other man’s body. Gojyo sank to his knees, right there in the middle of the dancefloor, trailing hands down the front of his chest, then circling around his hips and burying his face in his groin. He could feel the response against his cheek as he nuzzled, and then, methodically, undid the man’s belt, unzipped his fly, rolled the clean white underwear down, revealing a turgid cock, white, smooth and tinted with pink like his face, emerging from a thatch of black hair. The skin was so soft, so delicate. Gojyo brought the tip of his tongue against it and ran it up the shaft. The beautiful stranger — more beautiful than the full moon — moaned and shuddered as Gojyo slipped his lips around the tip and then swallowed it deep. He started to shake as Gojyo began to suckle in earnest, and there were words — urgent words spoken in a warning tone — but Gojyo couldn’t hear them. They dissolved in the bass vibration of the music, until Gojyo felt himself being pushed away. He released the man’s cock with a soft pop.

“Oh, Gojyo, I’m so, so terribly sorry to have to do this,” the man was telling him. What? Gojyo felt a sharp pain on the side of his head and the world went completely dark.

The next morning was ushered in with dull, throbbing pains through Gojyo’s skull, and a slow cataloguing, with eyes still shut, of every ache and pain and calamity. Every limb in Gojyo’s body was leaden and lifeless. His stomach heaved and gurgled. He couldn’t remember drinking anything — try as he might, he couldn’t remember much of anything — and suspected he was ill with the flu. He struggled to lift himself off the mattress and, when his head spun and reeled from the effort, fell onto his chest at the edge, retching onto the floor.

At some point, someone placed a bucket under his head. A little later, this was followed with a cool, wet cloth against his temple. 

“Thanks, bro,” he told Hakkai after the heaves stopped and he rolled over onto his back. After all their time together, this is what it came down to: Hakkai holding his hair off his face as he puked into a bucket. That took a real friend. “I don’t know what I did to get this bastard of a hangover.”

“You’ve had a mild concussion.” 

“Oh.” Gojyo suddenly felt the knob on his head. “Ouch.”

“Indeed.” Hakkai used the wet cloth to mop up the floor. “You also seem to have come under some sort of spell last night.”

Last night … last night … Gojyo couldn’t remember anything about last night. He just remembered some funky dream about a pleasure palace on the hill. 

“Was I hallucinating?”

“I wouldn’t say so, exactly, no.” Hakkai reassured him. “There is a legend in the village about a gangster who used to smuggle drugs through this region and dabbled in black magic. There are stories of a fancy villa he built. Apparently, it only shows up on New Year’s Eve of the Year of the Snake.”

“Ah!” The image of the white palace vanished in roiling clouds of grey.

“The rumour is,” Hakkai continued, reaching over and rubbing his fingers lightly against Gojyo’s scalp in soothing circles. “Anyone who receives an invitation to one of those parties never returns as the villa disappears at the stroke of midnight.” 

“Yet here I am,” Gojyo leaned back into the pillows and exhaled, puzzling over how he escaped. 

In the next moment, he was astounded when Hakkai leaned over and planted a soft, seductive kiss on his mouth. He wanted more of that! He reached up to capture that head and keep it snug against his own, but only felt soft hair sliding free beneath his fingers.

“Yes, here you are, Gojyo.” Hakkai smiled. Then he got up and started cleaning up the mess for real. 

Try as he might, Gojyo wasn’t able to get anything else out of his companion that day. All Hakkai would do was smile and tell him not to strain himself, while he swilled water and disinfectant on the floor and changed the sheets while Gojyo was still on them. It felt a lot like when Gonou was languishing in Gojyo’s bed, back in the days when they lived on the outskirts of Changa’an. 

“When are you going to tell me?” Gojyo asked. 

“When I’m ready.” Hakkai promised. “When you are properly rested.”

“Because of my concussion?”

“Yes, and other reasons.” Hakkai tucked the quilt up under his chin, like he was a kid with an honest-to-god real mother, adding cryptically, “You’re going to need your strength.”


End file.
